Part 2 (2/2)

”It will be a little stupid at first, Cherie, but we will try to make it go--and think what fun it will be that day when we tell the Major, 'It is Felice and not stupid old Octavia who is going to play with you.' First you shall learn where to move the pieces and how to tell me what Grandy has moved--then, we shall tie a handkerchief over my eyes--as we do when you and I play hide the thimble--my hands shall not touch the men at all. I shall say 'p.a.w.n to Queen's Rook's square'

and you shall put this little man here--this is the Queen's Rook's square--” It must have been the oddest game in the world, really, between that stern old man and the blindfolded invalid and the grave little girl who was learning to play. Of course it was easier for Octavia--she didn't have to move her hands or keep her eyes open. She could lie lower on the pillows--she smiled--a wavering smile when her father's triumphant ”Check!” would ring out.

”Alas, Felice!” she would murmur gaily, ”are we not stupid! Together we can't checkmate him--” They talked a great deal about chess. And how you can't expect to do so much with p.a.w.ns and how you mustn't mind if you lose them. But how carefully you must guard the queen--or else you'll lose your king--and how if ”You just learn a little day by day soon you'll have a gambit,” and how ”even if you don't care much about doing the silly game, you like it because you know that it gives Grandy much happiness.”

It was in those days that Felice learned that not only must she keep very happy herself but she must keep other people happy.

”It's not easy,” Octavia a.s.sured her, ”but it's rather amusing. It's a game too. You see some one who is tired or cross or worried and you think 'This isn't pleasant for him or for me!' Then you think of something that may distract the tiredness or the worry--maybe you play softly on the lute--maybe you suggest chess--maybe you tell something very droll that happened in the garden or the kennel--he doesn't suspect why you're telling him, at first he scarcely seems to hear you and then--when he does stop thinking about the unpleasantness--he smiles!--Watch Grandfather when he says 'Check!' and you will see what I mean--”

One comfort was, Felice didn't have to play chess all of the days.

Never on the days when Certain Legal Matters came. Then Grandfather disappeared into the gloomy depths of the library and from the garden Felice could hear the disagreeable grumble of the burly lawyer as he consulted with his extraordinary old client.

”Absolutely no! Absolutely no!” her grandfather's voice would ring out, ”I tell you I will not! A man who takes a pension for doing his duty to his country is despicable! And as for the other matter--I do not have to touch anything that was my wife's! I do not approve of the manner whereby she obtained that income--if Octavia wishes it, that is a different matter--it can be kept for the child if Octavia chooses to look at the matter that way--but for myself I will not touch it! I do not require it--I will not touch it--it was a bad business--There is nothing quixotic about my refusal, nothing whatever, sir! We differ absolutely on that point, as we do on most others!”

Felicia heard that speech so often that she could almost have recited it, she heard it nearly every time that Certain Legal Matters appeared, he always put the Major in a temper. Grandy couldn't get himself sufficiently calm for chess on such days.

Nor did she play chess on the days when the Wheezy came to sew.

The advent of the Wheezy was an enormous affair in Felice's life. It was one of the first times that the child was taken outside of the house or the garden--that bl.u.s.tery March day when she and Mademoiselle walked around the corner to a small house in whose bas.e.m.e.nt window rested a sign, WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY. A tiny bell jingled as they entered and from behind the curtains at the rear emerged a little woman whose face looked like the walnuts that were served with grandpapa's wine, very disagreeable indeed. Felice always spoke of her as The Disagreeable Walnut. It was in this shop that she saw her first doll, a ridiculous fat affair constructed of a hank of cotton with shoe b.u.t.tons for eyes and a red silk embroidered mouth and an enormous braid of string for hair. And it was while she was rapturously contemplating it that she heard the wizened proprietor say, ”Do you wish to have the work done by the job or by the day?” Then the Disagreeable Walnut pompously consulted a huge dusty ledger from which she decided that a certain Miss Pease would suit their requirements.

”Two dollars a day and lunch,” she informed them curtly and that was the way that Wheezy came into Felicia's life.

Short, fat, asthmatic and crotchety, she grumbled incessantly because there wasn't anything so modern as a sewing machine in the house and said that for her part she didn't see how people thought they could get along on nothing except what had done for their ancestors, that she certainly couldn't.

”Haven't you any ancestors?” Felice asked her eagerly. The Wheezy snorted.

”Of course. And they have been poor but they were honest,” she added deeply.

Which Felice repeated gravely to Grandy in the garden and added eagerly, ”Were our ancestors poor but honest?”

He smiled grimly.

”I shouldn't say,” he answered her curtly, ”that they were either conspicuously poor or conspicuously honest.”

The Wheezy not only remodeled ancient dresses into stiff pinafores for Felice but she had to make the cus.h.i.+ons that fitted in the dog hampers, down-stuffed oval affairs covered with heavy dull blue silk.

The Wheezy sputtered that she couldn't see why ”under the s.h.i.+ning heavens, dogs should sleep on things traipsed out like comp'ny bedroom pin-cus.h.i.+ons with letters tied onto their collars--”

Which so puzzled Felice that on one of those furtive occasions when she managed a few words with Zeb she demanded an answer. Zeb slapped his sides and chuckled.

”Because, Missy, putting on the frills and writing out the pedigree in French like he does makes folks pay jes' about twict as much for those dogs--”

Which was very bewildering, for Felice had not the remotest idea in this world what to pay for anything meant. How could she?

There was one very vivid recollection of Octavia. The recollection of the only time that the child remembered seeing her mother in a chair.

How this miracle was accomplished only Octavia and Mademoiselle D'Ormy could have told, but on a certain day in a chair she was and the heavy rose silk curtains were drawn before the bed alcove and the room was gay with flowers and a ruddy fire glowed in the iron grate under the carved white mantlepiece. Felice sat adoringly on a footstool at her feet and they talked a great deal about a time when Maman should not only sit in a chair but should walk. It seemed that Octavia hoped to take her daughter to a place she referred to rather vaguely as The House in the Woods. Octavia had lived in this house in the woods when she was a girl and she was very much worried about what might have happened to the garden of that house. She thought that she and Felice ought to make it lovely again--if Piqueur were only still strong enough to help them. But before Felice had had time to find out just who Piqueur was, Mademoiselle had ushered in a curly-haired young man who carried a portfolio exactly like the one that Certain Legal Matters carried. And it was while Mademoiselle was taking Felice back to the garden that she heard her mother say,

”You must be patient with the silly fears of a woman who mistrusts all lawyers--these deeds are duplicates of those that another--”

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